About This Content

Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kings is the first expansion pack for Civilization V - the critically acclaimed 2010 PC Game of the Year. This robust expansion covers the entire scope of time from founding your first Pantheon of the Gods and spreading religion across the world, to deploying your spies in enemy cities in order to steal information and technology.

As you move through the ages, you’ll interact with new types of city-states, engage in new city-state quests and global competitions, and master exciting new systems for land and naval combat. Civilization V: Gods and Kings will also include nine new civilizations, nine new wonders, three original scenarios, and dozens of new units, buildings, and techs that will offer even more ways for players to expand their empire and dominate the world.

Key Features:

Expanded Epic Game: The core game experience has been greatly expanded with the addition of new technologies (like Combined Arms), 27 new units (like the new 1-hex ranged unit Machine Gunner), 13 new buildings (like the Bomb Shelter), and 9 new Wonders (see below). Additionally, there are even more new units and buildings included in the three new Scenarios for modders to use.

New Civilizations: The expansion will deliver 9 new civilizations, such as Carthage, Netherlands, the Celts, and the Maya (it is 2012, after all), along with their unique traits, units and buildings. The expansion also includes 9 new leaders including William I, Prince of Orange, Boudicca and Pacal the Great.

Religion: A righteous people will seek out Faith to found a Pantheon of the Gods. As your Faith becomes stronger, you can cultivate Great Prophets who build on these simple beliefs to create a religion that you can customize and enhance as desired. Are you tolerant of other religions or is this the one true faith? Are you focused on Gold, Arts or Military? Beliefs can even unlock custom buildings that only people of your religion can construct. Great prophets, missionaries and inquisitors help you spread your beliefs to other lands and gain the alliances of City States, and like-minded civilizations.

Enhanced Diplomacy and Espionage: Establish embassies at foreign courts for closer ties (or clandestine operations). As the religions of the world start settling in, and the world moves into the Renaissance, you unlock your first spy (with more to come). Send them out to establish surveillance of foreign cities, steal advanced technologies from your strongest or wisest competitors, or interfere with city-state alliances. All of your actions can have a diplomatic impact if discovered, so always tread carefully.

City-States: Two new city-state types have been added (Mercantile and Religious) to bring all new advantages to the table. The city-state quest system has received a complete overhaul to decrease the importance of gold and add a whole range of new quests that further the narrative of the game, as well as make the diplomatic victory a more varied option. Ally with Marrakech to get access to their unique luxury resources! Vatican City and Jerusalem are holy cities that play key roles in the religious struggle.

World Domination: The fight for world domination is now more dynamic than ever before. The Gods and Kings expansion features a reworked combat system and AI that puts more emphasis on a balanced army composition. The new system allows your lines to stand longer than they could before, so you, as a player, can make smarter tactical decisions without worrying about a single unlucky roll of the dice.

Naval Combat: Your navy is now split into two different ship types, melee and ranged. This means that no coastal city should be considered safe, and can now fall to a surprise naval attack. Additionally, all embarked units now have Defensive Embarkation, and can stack with a naval unit for extra protection. Add to this the new Great Admiral, and the high seas have become a much more dangerous place.

New Wonders: There will be 9 new Wonders with all new effects including Neuschwanstein, the Great Mosque of Djenne, the Terracotta Army, the Great Firewall, and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Three new Scenarios:

Medieval: Grow your medieval kingdom into one of the great nations of Renaissance Europe, fending off outside invasions from Mongols and Ottoman Turks and fighting the religious wars of the Crusades and Reformation!

Fall of Rome: Play as either Eastern Rome or Western Rome trying to fend off the barbarians OR as one of the barbarians themselves.

Empires of the Smoky Skies: Build flying airships and huge tractor-like tanks from the unique tech tree of this Victorian science-fiction scenario, and use them to spread your empire across the pre-industrial world.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Don't meet the above requirements? Running on Ubuntu? That doesn't mean your configuration wont run Civ V, it just means we have not tested and vetted your configuration. Visit the Civilization V community page to share your experience with other Linux players and learn about how to send bugs to Aspyr. Your feedback will help us improve Civ V Linux and future AAA Linux releases![/list]

Gods & Kings adds two new mechanics, religion and espionage, and rebalances the tech tree, as well as adding 9 new civilizations. There are also several new scenario packs, but generally people don't care about those. (The steampunk scenario is pretty cool...for the one hour that it takes you to clear it.)

All of the new updated gameplay changes included in Gods & Kings are also included in the later expansion, Brave New World. Basically the only reason to get Gods & Kings at this point is if you want access to the unique civs that are included in this expansion. So I guess it's worth it to buy Gods & Kings when it's on sale if you want a larger pool of civs to choose from, but if you're going to pay full price for a Civ 5 expansion pack just skip this and get Brave New World instead.

Gods and Kings, the first real expansion of CIV5 (instead of small DLC) before BNW releases I wanted to recommend this quickly because you shouldn't really be playing vanilla CIV5... This expansion not only adds some civs/scenario's/stuff, but completely overhauls the game. Religion is added, balance tweaks, combat tweaks, the game feels more finished with this expansion... Once you've played a match with G&K, you can't play without it anymore.

The civ 5 expansion is actually quite good. First and foremost is the new religion system which is very indepth. Essentially you "customize" your religion starting with a basic pantheistic god then building up to a major world religion. You choose what bonuses your religion grants which range from military bonuses, economy bonuses, and even using the "faith" resource to contruct building. There are probably at least 30+ different religious upgrades to choose from which allows for a lot of customization. The city-state system has been revamped and works well with the espionage system. Basically the religion and new system for city-states create a sort of new "meta game" with a cold war type feel to it where you leverage control versus other civs since completing certain missions or using espionage basically secures a city for you even if they try to buy it off. The new civs have crazy abilities and units as well. There are lots of new features, and it is really worth buying.

The long awaited first expansion to Civ V, finally bringing in all the key features found in Civ IV namely Spies & Religion. Game now feels like a true successor to Civ IV. Along with a swag of new civilisations, wonders, tech tree and scenarios the new game features really add more depth to the gameplay. Definately a required purchase for any Civ fan.

The expansion's features shouldn't be the headline of this game. The fact that the AI is competent, now being able to take a city, and you can be friends with someone for more than 20 turns. It is all pretty nice. Then they threw in espionage, religion, 9 new civs, and some other stuff, and I was very happy!

Civ 5 changed a lot from Civ 4 and it was not all for the better. It took some getting used to. The Gods & Kings expansion makes some much needed fixes and improvements along with interesting new features such as a new spy mechanic. With the expansion the game feels fresh again and even more enjoyable. Just one more turn!

If you've logged dozens of hours in Civ5, then this expansion is a must-have. Sure, it's got new civilizations and wonders, and new mechanics like Religion and Espionage. But the best changes are game-play tweaks. The entire Tech Tree has been rebalanced, so there is not longer one "correct" way to progress through it. Changes to Great People prevent one civilization rocketing their way up to the Future Era while the others are still in the stone age. Naval combat is vastly improved, and the AI has seen some tweaks as well. The new content is nice, but the balancing and tweaking make this an essential add-on.

The fact that I already sunk over 200 hours in the original Civ5 should say enough; this expansion gives me an excuse to sink another 200 hours into it, it is THAT expansive. It adds customisible relgion, spies and intrigue, new civilizations and a bevy of new units and new scenarios, one of which is every special indeed. Also, immediate improvements to the AI can be noticed and they are a lot easier to read in diplomacy, and a lot harder to conqeor in combat. This expansion expands as much as it refines, which makes it a must have for any player. Ruling the world just became a bit more interesting again.

On paper, Gods & Kings looked like a big step forward for Civilization V. I'd watched Civ 5 gain respectability over its first year and a half... there were so many problems at launch, but so many improvements over 18 months, at least for the single-player game. (Multiplayer remains awkward, to this day.)

Gods & Kings looked like an expansion pack that would add some much-needed variety to the gameplay. It delivered a mixed bag of improvements and disappointments.

What I like:I find that the new City-State mechanics are an improvement. I like the quests, and I like having the new types of city-states. I generally enjoy manipulating the city-states, and vying for their allegiance.

I also find combat to be improved. The switch to a 100-hit point system makes it easier to manage your units in combat. Also, they have reworked naval combat, with clear distrinctiosn between ranged and melee naval combat. This is a big improvement.

What I dislike:The Religion system starts as a powerful game modifier but quickly becomes an afterthought as time wears on. The system for spreading religion is difficult to understand and control. And when you're playing on a random world, it's hard to predict which benefit is best for your fledgling religion. Choosing the wrong one makes Religion a useless money pit for your Civ. I also find that pursuing a profoundly religious civilization has very detrimental effects on your development -- it takes a lot of effort to build those buildings, and the payoff decreases as the game advances. It's sort of like Culture, except that you can commit to developing Culture and win a Cultural victory. You can't win a religious victory in this game, because it doesn't exist. Duh!

The espionage game in Gods & Kings is terrible. It has no manifestation on the game board at all. You're randomly granted imaginary spies. You choose where they "go" and what they "do" from a huge table of world cities. Occasionally, you get a pop-up notice that you've stolen a technology, or thwarted a coup attempt. That's it. It's about as much fun as manipulating an Excel spreadsheet, because that, in essence, is what you're doing. Horrible, horrible gameplay.

What I don't care about:More Techs. More Buildings. More Civs. Who needs 'em? Please. Take these back and go work on fixing multiplayer!

A year after the release of Gods & Kings, I find that I play more often with this DLC turned off. The new combat system was patched in to the base game at the same time Gods & Kings was released, which means that the only thing I miss are the better City States. But Civilization V is still a better game without Gods & Kings.

Excellent addon to the main game. If you love the Civilization series, it is a "must have" purchase. But do not buy this addon, if you do not get the discounted price. When it is not on sale with at least 25-30% off, it is a rip-off to pay the full price for an addon. Keep in mind you have to own the main game. So you see my point, why it is not really fair-priced.